So one thing regarding the local elections, I feel I need to address.
What? Is it the way local elections are perceived in the country? That they are elections but the sort that the ruling provincial party will win, so why does the media bother paying so much attention?
No.
Is it that the local elections are a report card of sorts, for the provincial government’s performance thus far?
No, though the PTI claims it is that when it comes to KP and isn’t when it comes to the Punjab. The other way around for the PML-N. I mean it might be, but that shouldn’t be the subject of a media column, but a general politics column.
No, the subject of this piece is Sindh, Pakistan’s second-largest province.
Pakistan’s news media runs on three cities. Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore. Forget other cities. And the peripheries, forget completely.
Add to that the fact that Pakistani news media’s top pundits are all either Punjabis or Urdu-speakers. No Sindhi at that apex level of any channel. Though, barring Saleem Safi, the same could be said of Pashtuns.
Come election season, whether it is the general elections or a by-poll or, in this case, the local bodies elections, expect the Punjabi-Muhajir commentariat to be aghast at the loving-their-chains Sindhis, who keep voting for the same PPP, which is accused of being a kleptocratic dynasty that doesn’t care about its people.
One wonders what Sindhi viewers would make of such a predictable coverage. Just change the perfect nouns, locations and the numbers, and it is the same analysis, with the same disgusted look on their faces, repeated year after year.
It was a bit of a pleasant surprise when one heard Nazir Leghari, the senior Urdu print journalist, whose viewpoint on Sindhi elections was slightly different than that of the other talking heads.
First of all, he said that the Sindhi does not vote for Pirs; that is South Punjab that you’re thinking of Shah Mehmood Qureshi types. Second, that even though the PPP does field feudal lords, there is a realisation in a lot of areas that the party doesn’t really need them as much as they need the party. And Asif Zardari’s electoral calculus of late seems to reflect that.
The Sindhi masses seem to have made a near-mythical bond with the Bhutto family in general but with Benazir Bhutto in particular. Yes, expect to see her name eliciting a stronger response than that of her father’s. This Our Lady of Resistance image lends itself to a lot of myth-making.
People misconstrue this as ethnic politics. That is hogwash. The Sindhi nationalists are routed nigh every time in the elections, despite the immense respect G M Syed has in the hearts of the people who still vote for the PPP.
The media has an image of Sindh that is frozen in time. To ascribe the voting patterns of Pakistan’s most urbanised province (yes, 49 percent) to illiterate villagers who a) don’t know any better and b) are coerced into doing so by the local feudal muscleman, is downright condescending.
To segue back to believing what Pirs say: when PTI chairman Imran Khan lies through his teeth and says that the land revenue system of KP has been transformed and digitised and the PML-N counters that it has done more to that end in the Punjab, very few watching the mainstream media will know that it is Sindh, actually, that leads the way in digitisation of land records.
When the PTI’s claims contradict the KP education and health department’s own statistics, but are still believed by the party’s voters, perhaps we need a new definition for what a helpless, ill-informed and endlessly enthralled voter is.
Sindh is being governed abysmally, make no mistake. But not as abysmally as the way Sindh is covered by the national news media.
